The Universal Asterisk

[Gustav 6,469]

We're now deep into the S80s, which got me wondering a bit. As we all know, career length is now a (possible) 9 seasons rather than 8, for the first time ever (no, seriously, it's been almost 15 years). But now that we know that, how do we treat it?

 

A self-respecting NFL fan may be able to tell you that the all-time record for rush yards in a season was set by Eric Dickerson, with a little over 2,000 yards in some season at some point. That's really impressive and should be remembered as an all-time record. That said, he set that record in a 16-game season. And before the NFL played 16 games, they played 14. In that time, the only player to ever break 2,000 yards in a season (and the all-time record holder when the schedule was lengthened) was OJ Simpson (yes, that OJ Simpson), who remains the only player to ever do it in 14 games but does not officially hold the record anymore. Today, the NFL plays 17 games in a season--so if Derrick Henry goes above Dickerson's number in the last week of next season, the league has another all-time record holder who holds said record partly because the system was set up differently. 

 

Anyway, let's say that Art Vandelay makes it up to the VHL next season, and let's further assume that I am a stat-grubbing narcissist and I am willing to do anything to make my player's numbers go up. And let's say it works really well. What if I play the last season of my career on the top team in the league, and I finish my career at, let's say, 340 wins after chasing good teams for a whole 9 seasons. Currently, that's amazing--it would put me 4th all-time in wins, and it's a mark that would put me in the Hall of Fame easily. 

 

Overall, though, that makes my record about 340-190-50. Still super impressive, and I think it's a HoF player depending on the surrounding circumstances, but 340/580 = 0.586, and when compared to Alexander Labatte's 0.650 (335/515), the "more wins = a better player" argument starts to lose its substance. The magical 300-win mark definitely won't be so magic anymore (because, think about this--300/580 = 0.517 and that hardly screams dominance). 

 

I think our nerds are capable of separating performance by era, but how do we present things like that to our noobs? Do we just ignore it and do our records like the NFL? Part of me says no, but I also think it would be hard to make the difference while still legitimizing current achievements and not making our spreadsheets cluttered.

 

(Also I'm quite thankful for Scotty Campbell, because this probably won't ever be a problem for our scoring records)

[Shindigs 1,771]

I mean normalizing for era is always a pain. I know Eno does some of it for other league stats atleast. But maybe the simplest solution in this case is to simply ignore wins as it's a team stat. Not a goalie stat, and we only treat it as a goalie stat because someone decided that's what it was many decades ago and we've just kinda rolled with it. Even though it makes 0 sense. Honestly the only goalie stat that actually gives you an even vaguely unbiased idea of how good the goalie is, is SV% and even that is massively impacted (at least IRL) by shot quality, and thus very reliant of whatever your defense is up to.

 

An ideal example is our backup in Vegas this season, who has a 21-0-0 record a 1.4x GAA (best in the league) and 7 SO (tied 3rd). If we considered Wins or it's normalized brother win%, GAA and SO/games played as actual valid representations of how good a goalie is, that would make him the best goalie in the VHLM, as clearly he gets a SO every 3 games and can't lose while letting in the fewest goals. But the reason for that is that he faces 15 shots per game on average and only plays rebuilding teams. So realistically those aren't goalie stats. They are "team difference" stats. His SV% is .910 which is certainly nice. Though really not in the same league as the other numbers.

 

Reducing a positions into a single number (SV%) for measuring success is boring, but the other numbers are so misleading that it's kinda hard to justify doing anything else.

[Daniel Janser 2,217]

27 minutes ago, Shindigs said:

I mean normalizing for era is always a pain. I know Eno does some of it for other league stats atleast. But maybe the simplest solution in this case is to simply ignore wins as it's a team stat. Not a goalie stat, and we only treat it as a goalie stat because someone decided that's what it was many decades ago and we've just kinda rolled with it. Even though it makes 0 sense. Honestly the only goalie stat that actually gives you an even vaguely unbiased idea of how good the goalie is, is SV% and even that is massively impacted (at least IRL) by shot quality, and thus very reliant of whatever your defense is up to.

 

An ideal example is our backup in Vegas this season, who has a 21-0-0 record a 1.4x GAA (best in the league) and 7 SO (tied 3rd). If we considered Wins or it's normalized brother win%, GAA and SO/games played as actual valid representations of how good a goalie is, that would make him the best goalie in the VHLM, as clearly he gets a SO every 3 games and can't lose while letting in the fewest goals. But the reason for that is that he faces 15 shots per game on average and only plays rebuilding teams. So realistically those aren't goalie stats. They are "team difference" stats. His SV% is .910 which is certainly nice. Though really not in the same league as the other numbers.

 

Reducing a positions into a single number (SV%) for measuring success is boring, but the other numbers are so misleading that it's kinda hard to justify doing anything else.

Well advanced stats could be something like expected goals against vs real goals against... but yeah it is difficult...

 

Normalisation has been a topic for quite a while in the NHL... by and large, the skill level in the NHL is the best it has ever been... depth players pulling off moves that 20 years ago only the creme de la creme were able to do and it is a legitimate question if a 20 year old Gretzky in today's NHL could achieve the same numbers he had 30-40 years ago. I think he would still be a star but not as ridonculously dominant as he has been in his prime when he had multiple 200+ point seasons... Also, Forsberg who played the majority of his prime in the dead puck era. Would he be able to score even more than he already did? Are goal scorer today who do not get 50 in 50 really worse than the players who managed to do so 60 or more years ago, when goalkeepers had no masks and played in t-shirt and swimming trunks and defender were pylons whose only job was fighting and checking (except Bobby Orr) (a little bit exaggerated, but you get the gist)?

 

Was Gretzky really as good as he was made us believe? After all, since he left the star studded Oilers, he never was able to lift a team to the heights of a Stanley cup. Whereas Messier did so with the Rangers and Vancouver (and won some cups with the Oilers after Gretzky left)? By that metric alone one could argue (and would be wrong imo) that Oilers without Gretzky is a success, Gretzky without Oilers is a bust... 

[Shindigs 1,771]

16 minutes ago, Daniel Janser said:

if a 20 year old Gretzky in today's NHL could achieve the same numbers he had 30-40 years ago

He's even said that he wouldn't multiple times himself. His two main given reasons being 1) the difference in conditioning in today's NHL. Players were actually quite commonly not in "game shape" ever back in those days. and 2) Systems, his style revolved around being pretty much completely free to do whatever the hell he wanted and not having the defensive systems of today setup to stop him. So if he don't even think he could do it himself, I think it's fair to say he couldn't.

[Daniel Janser 2,217]

3 minutes ago, Shindigs said:

He's even said that he wouldn't multiple times himself. His two main given reasons being 1) the difference in conditioning in today's NHL. Players were actually quite commonly not in "game shape" ever back in those days. and 2) Systems, his style revolved around being pretty much completely free to do whatever the hell he wanted and not having the defensive systems of today setup to stop him. So if he don't even think he could do it himself, I think it's fair to say he couldn't.

meh, what does he know about hockey?

 

Jokes aside, I was not aware that he made this statements, thanks for pointing out that fact. He just gained respect in my books (not that there was a lack of any to start with)...